


inevitable

by cautiouslyoptimistic



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, almost nauseating really, it's fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 05:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8653030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cautiouslyoptimistic/pseuds/cautiouslyoptimistic
Summary: she knows things have gone too far when she tries to convince lena that she's got a twin sister.or, lena discovers kara's secret.





	

She’s  _angry_. 

She is, despite J’onn’s knowing looks, his urges for her to be honest. She’s only angry, even if Alex pulls her into a hug that lasts just a tad too long for it to be anything but a wordless offer of comfort. Even if she feels a pressure behind her eyes and a heavy weight on her chest, making it difficult to breathe. Kara is undoubtedly, unquestionably, undeniably  _angry_. Nothing less, nothing more. Kara is angry and the anger is making her reckless. 

(She recklessly turns to Lena.)

“It’s  _infuriating_ ,” she tells Lena, pacing the woman’s office, wringing her hands in a futile attempt to  _show_  her frustration (as if Lena can’t tell just by tenor and cadence of her voice). “And everyone keeps saying that I’m not actually angry, that I’m not being honest with myself, but what else should I be feeling?”

“Kara, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what happened.” (She’s so patient, so calm. Kara doesn’t understand how someone like her exists.) 

“A…well, a  _former_  friend of mine has been lying to me, decided to keep something from me that I should’ve known. That I should’ve been trusted with.”

“That’s not vague at all,” Lena laughs. Kara immediately ceases her pacing, turning to Lena with an apologetic expression, needing her to understand.

“It’s just not—”

“—your secret to tell? I understand, Kara. I actually have a thing for mysteries, and you’re plenty mysterious.” Lena is smiling benignly, but Kara feels as if her world has been knocked off balance because that—well, she’s not quite sure what to make of  _that_. 

“I’m sorry for barging in on you like this,” Kara begins, straightening her glasses. “I guess I just needed a friend to talk to.” 

“I’m flattered you thought of me.” There it is again, that  _thing_. It’s not just Lena’s words (which…Kara’s not really ready to think about that) but it’s the fluttering somewhere in her belly, the temporary rush of levity. 

“If anyone has experience with not being trusted, it’s you,” Kara says, looking down. When her words register she immediately holds up her hands, giving Lena a panicked expression. “Not that you deserve it! Or that you’re not trustworthy. Or—”

“It’s all right, Kara. I understand what you meant. And you’re right.” Her smile is unaffected, unchanged, but Kara can see something shift in her eyes; the playfulness from before is gone, something sad taking its place. “Is there a reason you feel…” she pauses, tilting her head to one side, as if considering something, “…angry? Is there a reason you feel as if you’re owed their trust?” 

“I’ve trusted them with everything. Why couldn’t they trust me?” The moment the words come out of her mouth, she knows. She knows that she’s been wrong, she knows that Alex and J’onn know her better than she knows herself, she knows that Lena had caught on from the moment Kara had entered the office. She braces herself for the lecture, for the soft explanation, for Lena’s patience and calm to shine through as she points out the truth. But Lena takes her by surprise. 

“You have every right to be  _angry_ ,” she says, stressing the final word just enough to let Kara know that anger is not what she’s talking about. “It’s natural.”

“So what do I do?”

“You either forgive them or you don’t. They made the choice to lie, you can only decide how you proceed from here.”

“Would you?” Kara asks, a little bit of desperation tinting her voice (something she does not intend  _at all_ ). Inexplicably, Lena smiles.

“Well, that depends entirely on the friend.” 

 

x

 

She decides that she’s not sure if she’s willing to forgive James and Winn yet. (A part of her knows that forgiveness is inevitable. Winn is her best friend and has weathered  _so much_  with her. And James is…well, he’s James. They’re her family, forgiveness was never really in question. Yet, she also wants to make them sweat it out.) 

(She’s been called nice her entire life, but that didn’t mean she actually  _is_  nice. At least, not  _all_  the time.) 

Of course, what she hadn’t taken into account is that James and Winn are her only friends (at least, the only friends she can share everything in her life with). Thus, though she finds herself spending more and more time with Lena, it’s not really the same. (She doesn’t like thinking about how it’s not the same because of that fluttery lightness she gets, that swoop in her chest that she’s not entirely familiar with.)

(She doesn’t like thinking about it, but that doesn’t make it any less true.) 

What really gets her (and by that, she means what leaves her just dumbfounded) is that Lena doesn’t even seem aware of what she’s doing. When Alex cancels sister night in order to spend ‘totally platonic, only friendly’ time with Maggie, Kara calls Lena and asks her if she wants to come over for a movie. She’s not entirely sure why she’s surprised when Lena actually shows up, why she feels warm whenever Lena reaches out to grab her wrist, pointing out inaccuracies in the movie they’re watching (“See, now that doesn’t even make sense. Honestly, you’d think they’d at least  _try_  to make it believable”), why her head feels fuzzy for a moment when she gets a powerful whiff of Lena’s perfume. And while Kara is left feeling as if she’s missing something important, Lena seems entirely oblivious, chattering away as if Kara’s not two seconds away from saying something inappropriate for a friend. (Something like  _thank you_. Something like  _you’re pretty_. Something like  _would it be weird if I kissed you?_ ) 

When Lena shifts on the couch, leaving her impossibly close, practically pressed up against Kara, Kara nearly lets out a squeak, saved only by her attention being diverted by the sound of a loud crash. She knows Lena can’t hear it because the other woman’s eyes are still fixed on the television, a small smile tugging at her lips, almost as if she’s unaware she’s doing it. A part of Kara just wants to ignore the crash, hope that a car backfired or something, but when it comes again—louder and accompanied by the sound of shouting—Kara shuffles away from Lena with an awkward laugh.

“I’m gonna call Alex. Make sure she’s okay. She’s on a date,” she adds unnecessarily when Lena turns to her with a frown. “Not that she’d admit it. But it is. A date, I mean.”

“All right,” Lena says, looking more confused than anything. With one last nod and too-wide smile, Kara rushes to her bedroom, escaping her apartment from the window. She stops the robbery taking place as quickly as possible, leaves the would-be robbers somewhere she’s sure NCPD will get to them, and makes it back to her apartment in record time, barely breaking a sweat. 

When she walks back to the couch, however, Lena has an odd look on her face.

“Do you have a landline?” she asks suddenly, sounding vaguely uncomfortable. 

“Um, yes.” She doesn’t think she’s ever used it, but it  _exists_. Strangely enough, relief floods Lena’s features before she’s able to recompose herself, her usual polite smile back in place. “Uh. Why?” 

“It’s just…well, you left your phone.” Lena points to Kara’s cell phone, sitting obviously on the coffee table where she’d forgotten it. “Glad to know you’re not just trying to avoid me.” She tries to play it off as a joke, but the very real fear is present in her voice and Kara instantly feels terrible. 

“Avoid?” Kara scoffs, waving a hand. “You? Never.” 

 

x

 

Admittedly, she becomes a little…well,  _lax_  is the only word that makes any sense. It starts off with carelessness, much like leaving her phone when she’s supposed to be calling her sister, before escalating to making up excuses for why they can’t spend time together that anyone could’ve spotted as a lie. 

(“Sorry, Lena,” she says one night, rushing out of the DEO at the news of an alien attack in downtown Nation City. “I’ve got to take care of my cat.”

“You’ve got a cat?” 

“Well, not  _my_  cat. It’s Alex’s. She’s out of town.”

“I saw your sister earlier this morning with that detective,” Lena says, sounding slightly accusatory.)

She’s not quite sure what’s happened. (That’s a lie.) All she knows is that—as irrational as it sounds (it’s not irrational at all)—she  _wants_  Lena to call her out, wants Lena to sit her down and ask her about how she can get around National City so quickly, about how she manages to get  _Supergirl_  as a source for nearly all her stories, about how she warms that cold pizza without using the microwave. 

(As irrational as it is—it’s not irrational at all—she wants Lena to connect the dots because she’s just not willing to lie to her anymore.) 

So perhaps  _lax_  isn’t the right word. Perhaps  _insane_  or  _crazy_  or  _hell-bent on ruining everything_  is more appropriate. But all she can think about is how  _angry_  she had been when she found out James and Winn had been lying to her about the Guardian. (And if now she can admit to herself that she was never angry, that she was  _hurt_ , it’s irrelevant. Angering Lena is just as unthinkable as hurting her.) 

Kara lets out a loud sigh as she races through the sky, hoping to let off a little steam, not only from Snapper’s latest efforts to drive her nuts, but from the fact that she  _still_  hasn’t talked to James or Winn, from the fact that there are aliens all across National City who’ve been needlessly preoccupied with making her life difficult, from the fact that she’s 85% sure that Lena hates her for her latest excuse.

(“I’m pretty sure I twisted my ankle.”

“And that means you can’t meet for coffee? You realize you’d be sitting down, right?”

“Um, well. The thing is, I have  _really_  weak ankles.”)

(Ugh, make that 99% sure that Lena hates her.) 

She finds a nice, empty, and mostly scentless alleyway to speed change into her regular clothes before deciding to walk the rest of the way to L-Corp and maybe offer Lena some sort of apology or excuse that the CEO would believe. She’s rehearsing possible scenarios in her mind as she walks when she hears it: a loud crash. Muttering under her breath, she’s just about to change back into her suit when she realizes the crash is from an enormous alien (green, slightly slimy, green saliva dripping from his mouth to the ground, where it sizzles) throwing himself into the wall of L-Corp. 

And standing behind the alien, looking ready to kill if comically so, is  _Lena._

“Not my building!” she shouts, armed with only an umbrella, rushing forward despite being hopelessly outmatched. The alien turns, clearly preferring his new target (a young woman who smells quite nice) to the wall. And Kara—well, Kara doesn’t think, she acts. 

She rushes forward, placing herself between the alien and Lena, holding him back, glad that between the concrete walls of L-Corp and the alien’s enormous body, she’s hidden from view from everyone. (Well, everyone except for Lena.) 

(But then, she’d wanted Lena to know, hadn’t she?)

“Kara?” Lena says, but Kara doesn’t have the time to acknowledge the tacit question. With a great heave, she drags the alien into the air, flying him away from the center of National City to somewhere she can subdue him without being seen. 

And later, when Lena calls her, she gives her worst excuse yet via text:

_Sorry, can’t talk. Just met the twin sister I never knew I had._

x

“Twin sister, huh?” Alex says, trying to quell her smile and failing, scrolling through Kara’s texts. “She must really like you if she’s dealt with all this for so long.”

“What do I do?”

“It’s your secret, Kara. You’re the one who needs to figure out what you want to do.”

“You think she’ll be mad?”

“I guess you’ll find out,” Alex says unhelpfully, her laugh finally escaping her as she finds the text Lena sent Kara asking about Alex’s fictional cat. 

 

x

 

She tells herself that it’s not creepy that she knows where Lena lives even though she’s never been there. After all, Lena had done the same thing to her. (But when Kara knocks on the door, she can’t help but feel terribly creepy, and when Lena lets her in, Kara is anything but smooth and charming. Mostly, she’s awkward and bumbling, knocking into a vase almost immediately.)

(But honestly, it’s not her fault. Lena’s vast apartment is a lot like a museum: sparsely colored and full of things only meant to be looked at.) 

“So where’s your twin?” Lena asks in a deadpan as she closes the door behind Kara, maintaining her distance even as she raises her eyebrows and crosses her arms over her chest. She doesn’t look very impressed, and Kara doesn’t exactly blame her. 

“Tragically, she turned out to be a time traveler, and since you can’t travel to a time you exist she, um, disintegrated.” Lena doesn’t respond, she just fixes Kara with a look, a look that simultaneously says she’s pissed and she’s amused despite herself. And that swoop in the chest makes a roaring comeback, and Kara begins to feel pleasantly warm. “Lena, I’m sorry. I just—”

“—so the time you left in the middle of dinner, it wasn’t to go to bingo night with your grandmother?”

“Yeah, I don’t have a grandmother. There was a fire-breathing alien burning people’s homes down.”

“And the time you said you had to go with your sister to the hairdresser…?”

“Right, Alex isn’t actually afraid of scissors. There was just an issue with alien technology falling into the wrong hands.” It feels good—no,  _amazing—_ to get all this off her chest, to admit the truth and watch as Lena’s expression slowly clears, the frown becoming less and less pronounced. It’s as if she’s had a literal weight lifted from her shoulders, and she suddenly finds that she’d answer any question Lena might have. (And when she thinks about why that is, it doesn’t scare her at all.) 

(Much like forgiving James and Winn, she thinks this was inevitable.) 

“So you weren’t making stupid excuses to avoid me?”

“Avoid you? Never.” 

Lena’s arms fall to her sides as she takes several steps forward, leaving virtually no space between them. And when she leans in, Kara doesn’t think twice before meeting her halfway. 

(If telling the truth was like a weight being lifted, the kiss is like flying.) 

“So I take it I’m the sort of friend you can forgive?” Kara asks with the slightest grin when Lena pulls away, her eyes still closed. 

“You’re lucky I like mysteries,” is all Lena says before kissing her again.

And Kara decides they can probably have the conversation about not keeping secrets later.

**Author's Note:**

> posted this on tumblr @forlornlyoptimistic, thought i'd post it here too. if you got prompts, let me know


End file.
